Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Friday, August 12, 2016

EDITORIAL - Moving closer to ‘Clexit’: Climate change is seen by growing numbers as a magnificent hoax

First there was Brexit, when Great Britain shook up the global
establishment by following through on a dare to exit the European Union.
Now a movement is building that would further stun the
supranationalists: an exit from the United Nations
climate change protocol, dubbed “Clexit.” (Not very imaginative, but
sloganeers are rarely original.) Men of good will don’t tear up
agreements unless there’s ample reason, but international pacts with
intangible benefits are never worth the paper they’re printed on. Brexit
happened, and Clexit could be next.

Donald Trump, whose name
strikes fear in the hearts of establishmentarians of both parties, has
said if elected he would renegotiate or cancel U.S. participation in the
accord signed by nearly 200 nations in Paris last December. He says the
pact, meant to reduce greenhouse gases that the greenies say cause
global warming, is particularly harsh toward U.S. industry, and his
rallying cry is “America first.”

Clexit-like language has prompted squeaks of dismay from adherents of
green orthodoxy in Washington. Two former directors of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, William Ruckelshaus and William Reilly,
issued a statement this week claiming the Donald would undermine the
environmental legacy of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and George H.W.
Bush. “Donald Trump has shown a profound ignorance of science and of the
public health issues embodied in our environmental laws,” they say. “To
back away now, as Trump wants to do, would set the world back decades —
years we could never recover.” Lest they lose their place in the
capital establishment, both endorsed Hillary Clinton. Once a bureaucrat,
always a bureaucrat.

While these two worthies fret over the fate
of “the world,” Mr. Trump focuses on the future of America, which would
be his No. 1 job as president. In his speech to the Detroit Economic
Club, he pledged to end the Obama-Clinton “war on the American worker,
and unleash an energy revolution that will bring vast new wealth to our
country.” Lifting restrictions on American energy would boost the U.S.
GDP by $100 billion and jobs by 500,000 annually.

Prospects
for that kind of bounty is what drove Great Britain to bolt the EU. In
short order, post-Brexit Prime Minister Theresa May has adopted a plan
to unleash a hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” revolution. Her plan
would award Britons in the vicinity of shale natural gas drilling
operations as much as $17,000. The money — a bribe, as anti-fracking
activists call it — would be funded by drilling fees paid by industry.

1 comment:

Anyone who thinks the climate is on the straight and narrow and hasn't changed noticeably over the past 40 years just hasn't been paying attention. They will take their ignorance to the grave while the rest of the world deals with it.